She Was Left to Drown in the Rising Tide Yamacraw
She Was Left to Drown in the Rising Tide Yamacraw
Researcher ✔️
Michael Elijah Muhammad Clare
During the middle of slavery in the Bahamas, particularly in Nassau, there was a female slave named Hannah. According to my great-grandmother’s tale, this woman was a seer a person who had the ability to see into the future and communicate with the ancient spirits of the ancestors.
This woman is said to be a part of my ancestry. My grandmother said that her own mother told her this story many years ago.
The story says that this young slave woman, nineteen years old, was named Hannah by her slave master. She was seen as unbreakable by the overseers in South Carolina before she was sold and shipped to the Bahamas with the Loyalists.
Other slaves who had been on plantations with Hannah told stories of her having the power to shape-shift, raise the dead, and speak to the ancestors, conjuring a blue fire in the night outside the knowledge of the overseers and masters. Yet she remained stubborn and unbreakable in spirit.
By the time she was sold to new masters, she had already created a reputation for herself among other slaves and southern plantation owners. Many people believed the rumors about her, and some said that nobody wanted to own her.
As for the shape-shifting abilities my grandmother spoke of, she said Hannah could turn into almost anything, even another person she knew.
I once asked my grandmother why Hannah did not simply turn into a lion and kill her oppressors. My grandmother replied that Hannah was bound by ancient laws. According to her, the ancestors who came from the skies had decided which days of the year based on the rotation of the Earth around the sun this gift would be available to their descendants on Earth.
My grandmother said Hannah remained within the trenches of slavery because she could not free her people. According to her, many of them had nowhere else to go and did not believe escape was possible.
By the time Hannah was shipped to the Bahamas on a ship with the Loyalists, she had endured so many beatings from her overseers that no human being was known to survive such punishment beatings severe enough to kill a horse.
But my grandmother said Hannah was special, and the lashes could never penetrate her soul.
In 1814, my grandmother said that Hannah’s owners finally heard the rumors about her. By that time she was thirty-six years old.
They confronted her with overwhelming brutality, trying to force a confession from her that she was a witch. A local priest was also in attendance.
That day, from morning until afternoon, the master’s overseer beat Hannah while she was strapped to a silk cotton tree in Fox Hill, near where the roundabout stands today in Nassau. The overseer expected her to die from the beating.
But Hannah did not die.
Her bloody body was left hanging on the whipping tree until the next morning.
The following week Hannah was still too weak to return to work. Her master, disgusted and convinced by the rumors that she was a witch, handed Hannah over to his cousins in the area.
They beat her again and treated her with cruelty.
Finally, they chained Hannah’s dying body in the waters off Yamacraw Shores at low tide.
When the tide came in, Hannah drowned.
But her body was never found.
Many slaves believed Hannah turned into a fish and swam away into the deep sea.
No trace of her was ever seen again, except for the shattered gray dress Hannah had worn the day before.
No blood.
No body.
No clues to what truly happened to Hannah.
To this very day, Yamacraw Shores is still considered a spooky place by many people, especially during the month of May, though no one seems to know exactly why.
The elders today still say that a blue fire can sometimes be seen at night if you repeatedly say the name Hannah around this month.
Personally I’ve never tried it, nor will I ever because I don’t know if she’s mad for what happened to her in this world.
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